Former Serb military commander Ratko Mladic was "not a monster" and should be acquitted of genocide and war crimes, his defence argued Friday, insisting the prosecution had failed to prove his role in the Bosnian war. Once dubbed "the Butcher of Bosnia", Mladic, 74, has denied 11 charges including two of genocide, as well as war crimes and crimes against humanity arising out of the bloody 1992-95 Bosnian conflict.
"Ratko Mladic is not a monster, he was a soldier defending against a monster, that was the Islamic war machine," his lawyer Branko Lukic told the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). The defence is spending three days presenting their closing arguments to end a trial which opened in May 2012. His case is the last before the UN's ICTY which closes next year, and a verdict is expected sometime before late November 2017.
Prosecutors urged the judges on Wednesday to jail Mladic for life, accusing him of leading a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing to create a Greater Serbia in the 1990s Balkans wars. "The time has come for General Mladic to be held accountable for those crimes against each of his victims and the communities he destroyed," prosecutor Alan Tieger told the tribunal.
But his defence team shot back on Friday that Mladic was "an innocent man" who had constantly sought a cease-fire and had ordered that Muslims be protected. The prosecution had attempted "to pump General Mladic up to superhuman proportions and abilities as if he was all-knowing and all-powerful," said Lukic.
"It is our job to remind your honours, remind the prosecution and remind the public, not only watching today but future generations who will judge these proceedings as a part of history, that Ratko Mladic is a person, not a superhuman being," Lukic said. "Ratko Mladic is an accused, who stands before you an innocent man." He alleged that the prosecution's reasoning would see every soldier in every war found guilty, and urged the judges to find that the prosecution had failed to prove Mladic's guilt beyond all reasonable doubt.
"He is guilty for the prosecution just because he is a Serb and tried to defend his country, first Yugoslavia, and then Republika Srpska, from attacks and wars that were started and pursued by others, not by Serbs." Mladic is notably accused of being behind the punishing 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in a relentless campaign of shelling and sniping.
He is also charged with genocide for his role in the 1995 killing of almost 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, Europe's worst bloodshed since World War II. But another defence lawyer Dragan Ivatic said the prosecution was trying to get the court to view the evidence through "a peephole" and had shown a "lack of actual evidence", adding the prosecution's "case is weak and impudent."
"What is at stake here: the ability of General Mladic to go home, spend time with his loved ones and then die at home surrounded by his family, and not in a concrete cage in jail," added Ivatic. "He did his job to defend his people and country and tried not to meddle in politics." More than 100,000 people died and 2.2 million others were left homeless during the Bosnian war, one of several conflicts which erupted in the death throes of the former Yugoslavia. After living openly in Serbia despite an international arrest warrant against him, Mladic was finally captured in 2011 after 16 years on the run and transferred to a UN detention centre in The Hague.